


Hear My Call

by anniebibananie



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Divergence, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Phone Call, it chapter 2 - Freeform, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 19:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21002942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniebibananie/pseuds/anniebibananie
Summary: Stanley gives Bill a call before doing the unspeakable.





	Hear My Call

**Author's Note:**

> I’m posting this on a train to Chicago so please be kind with typos. 
> 
> Mostly based off movie but a few things that could maybe be tied to the book.

Stan hung up the phone. His hands were shaking, and he thought about it abstractly the way he thought about puzzles and the birds in the trees. They were things to be observed, sometimes solved, but often from a distance. Yes, his hands were shaking, and his stomach felt queasy, and what could we extrapolate from those facts, Stan? 

It was like all those facts and figures on the page when he was doing number work for the firms. How do we pull out the proper data for this company, how do we get them in the black, how do— His mind was beginning to ramble. That was when he was lost, when the train went too fast for him to keep atop of. 

Mike had called, though, and he hadn’t thought about Mike in years. He hadn’t thought about nearly any of them, and wasn’t that just horrible and surprising? He’d forgotten everything. He’d forgotten the roots that had made him beneath the soil. 

His body was moving, and he felt removed from it. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to stay grounded, on his own two feet, when all his mind could manage to do was keep uncovering things he’d never known he’d forgotten. 

Somehow, though, it felt like he’d never forgotten that clown. It felt like he’d never forgotten that fear of being alone, of having the teeth clamped into his face, of knowing he would come to this moment here and it would all come to an end. He hadn’t remembered the specifics, but somehow… Stan didn’t know how to vocalize it. Like maybe that fear had been stamped on his heart, and it had made him wary and soft for the rest of his life. 

He couldn’t go back. It struck him sharp, like the clash of water against his shins the first time he’d jumped into the quarry. He couldn’t go back, but he  _ had  _ to or none of the rest of them could possibly make it. 

He was literally on the edge of that quarry, having to choose to jump or turn around, and none of the options seemed manageable. He couldn’t  _ do  _ it, and he didn’t feel particularly weak for it he just felt… nothing, maybe. No, not nothing, that wasn’t right either. He felt like a man with an impossible choice, one who knew what they wanted to do but didn’t know how to. 

No, he couldn’t go back, but that meant he couldn’t  _ be  _ at all. 

_ Stan the man.  _ No one had called him that since he was a kid, and he felt a dry laugh release from his lips. The bathroom was too white in front of him, and it smelled stark and clean. Not like the lemon cleaners his mother used to use, though, sterile and unforgiving. 

He’d been young once. It felt strange that he hadn’t been able to remember it. 

His mind could already place where he kept the razor blades, and he felt the shaking take over his whole body. But then his fingers were twitching toward his phone, and there was no way he should have known the numbers that jumped to his fingers and somehow they appeared in front of him as if they’d just been waiting for this moment. 

The phone rang, and he let the tap begin running into the tub. 

“Hello? Who…” The words ran off, and Stan could hear him breathing over the line. 

_ Billy,  _ his mind seemed to say. 

“It’s Stan.” 

It was strange how Stan could remember him and not, like an unfinished patchwork quilt. There was something in his mind’s eye, a vision of a promise made long ago that he’d known he didn’t want to be apart of but he  _ had  _ to because everyone he loved was. 

And there’d been Bill, standing across from him looking as earnest as he always had. Bill with his kind smile and kinder eyes and a look that always seemed to say  _ I understand. I know what you’re feeling _ . The truth was Stan had never been able to say no to Bill, never once, and maybe that was why he had wanted to call. 

To see if he could. To see if he still had that magnetic pull over him to save him from something he did and didn’t want to do in equal measure.

“Stan? Stanley… Uris?”

“Yeah, Bill,” he whispered back. He wasn’t sure the last time he had heard his name whispered like that. A sort of unknowing love within the letters that he used to get just from being by all the losers, even when they were teasing, even when it was a joke. They’d been unable to hide the deep affection they felt for each other, and Bill had seemed the epicenter. Bill could probably barely remember him, and yet still somehow he  _ knew.  _

“Wh-what are you… Did Mike call you?”

“Come on, Bill,” Stan said, a smile on his face as he sat on the lip of the tub. He could feel the heat of the water wafting up toward him.  _ Come in,  _ it seemed to say.  _ You’ll always be alone,  _ it seemed to taunt. “You’re smart enough to put that mystery together.” 

“How’d you…” His words trailed off again, and Stan could imagine it all with a clarity that felt bizarre. He didn’t really know what Bill would look like now, but when he imagined him he still had that sweeping smile and searching eyes. Taller, maybe a little broader, still more streamlined than bulky. 

“I don’t know,” Stan said with a sigh. He brought up his free hand and pulled the glasses off, pinching the bridge of his nose to relieve the tension of his head. The memories sweeping in  _ hurt.  _ “I can’t go back, Bill.” 

“Stan, wh-what are you talking about? We promised.” 

“Do you remember  _ what  _ we promised? Or just that we promised?” Stan asked. He shifted his body a little, taking his free hand to run it over the filling tub and feel the wetness between his fingers. Not quite like the feeling of blood that had coated them after Bill cutting his palm, and he turned it over now and looked at that familiar scar. 

He’d had it for as long as he remembered (and now, he knew, longer than he remembered), and it had seemed a touchstone. He would bring his thumb to it and push in, run it over the lines, feel a little comforted despite not knowing why a scar should make him feel that way. 

“A promise is a promise, Stan.” 

He closed his eyes, and like a flickering picture of a movie on the back of his eyelids Stan could see Bill in front of him holding his palm between his hands. Asking him to swear, and Stan hadn’t wanted anything to do with any of the horrors any longer. He didn’t want to come back to this town, to fight evils again, but he’d been willing to swear anything to Bill. 

Bill could look at him, could ask him the world, and Stan remembered the feeling of being ready to hand it all over for him as easily as he did the feeling of sinking into his favorite reading chair down in the living room. The way Bill had cut his palm and gave a wince of pain afterward, as if he could feel it too, as if he would be able to understand every hurt Stan endured. 

He’d loved him, Stan realized, though he hadn’t been able to ever properly understand that emotion then. Perhaps not even quite now, but he thought he could hold it better within his head at the least. He wished he was as brave as Bill so he could do something proper about it. Also so that he could find some way out of this predicament besides for the one he’d set his mind on. 

“You have to come, Stan,” Bill whispered. Stan wondered where he was right now. He was probably already getting his things together, ready to rush to the airport and come home. 

_ Home,  _ it had been forever since Stan had thought of Derry or the fact that it had ever been his home at all. 

“We need you.” 

“When have you ever needed me,” Stan replied, and he was surprised to hear the words mostly because he’d been sure they would stay in his head. The sort of words the water and the razor blade spoke to him with. “I’ll ruin it, Bill. Too afraid.”

“I need you, Stan. Won’t you do it for your old pal, stuttering Bill?” Bill paused. So did Stan. “You were one of the first memories that came back to me, actually. I r-remembered…”

“What?” Stan asked. He turned the faucet off. The water steamed so strongly it almost didn’t seem real—some sort of cartoon illusion. 

“It was one of those days we were at the Barrens searching for G-G-Georgie, and you had your backpack straps tightened up, holding them with your thumbs. A branch had just hit you in the face, and you were trying to not be gr-grumpy about it but you were an open book. I reached forward to wipe away the spot of blood, and your face just bloomed into this smile.”

“The Red Phalarope.” Stan could remember because he’d been looking into Bill’s eyes and seeing the flecks of gold, thinking that was exactly the way Bills eyes  _ should  _ look because he was sort of unbelievable, sort of like a big treasure, and Stan had realized how intensely he’d been staring and shifted his eyes away to see that bird in one of the nearby trees.

“Exactly,” he said with a laugh, a fond one. “You were so excited. I remember feeling bad, too, that you were happy and I was going to have to make you sad again when we searched for my brother.”

Stan could still feel the way Bills thumb had ran over his forehead, soft and barely there with a lick of moisture from his tongue to wipe the blood. Bill was constantly warm, but it had been reassuring. 

“Just like now,” Bill continued. “I shouldn’t ask it of you, Stan, but we’ve gotta do it t-together, and I can’t do it if you’re not there.”

Stan knee that was a lie because Bill could do just about anything, but maybe that was why Stan had called. He knew he could be convinced out of this final act, and wouldn’t it be better? To go out at least seeing Bill Denbrough’s concerned eyes focused on  _ him  _ just once more? 

He felt in the pit of his stomach that this was only danger, that it didn’t end well, that there was no way any of them left it unscathed, but maybe… 

“We promised, Stanley. Will you come?”

Bill, thirteen and already holding so many horrors on his back and love in his heart, standing across that circle from him and giving a shy smile. Bill, only two years later packing up to leave with his family and tugging Stan into a hug that they’d grown too old to excuse—seemingly lasting forever, with chins tucked into necks and whispering things into the skin there ( _ I won’t forget, Stan, I promise. How could I? _ ). Bill, forty and asking him something Stan wasn’t sure he could give but was about ready to anyways. He couldn’t bear the thought of Bill in that circle looking across to see Stan not there, not in his place.

So he spoke as confidently as he could manage. 

“I swear, Bill.” 


End file.
